Stabbed to Death 2

As per usual, NRA enthusiasts are calling attention to the multiple stabbing in southwestern China, where darkly-clad assailants with long knives stabbed their way through the Kunming Railway Station, killing at least 29 and wounding 143. NRA bloggers offer the stock analyses that a few citizens with guns may have stopped the carnage, and that mass murders occur even without guns. I have even heard radio interviews of officials offering opinions that the assailants used knives because they are more frightening than guns.

It seems more likely that in China, despite a slight recent rise in gun crime, even the criminals don’t have ready access to guns. It seems likely that the body count would have been a lot higher if the attackers had used firearms, such as happened to the 60 people shot in Nairobi last September, or the 164 people shot in Mumbai in 2008.